Fake Moon Flight Myth: Check this out!

[Guest guest]

Lessons of the 'Fake Moon Flight' Myth

James Oberg

 

 

 

 

Depending on the opinion polls, there's a core of Apollo moon flight

disbelievers within the United States--perhaps 10 percent of the population, and

up to twice as large in specific demographic groups. Overseas the results are

similar, fanned by local attitudes toward the U.S. in general and technology in

particular. Some religious fundamentalists--Hare Krishna cultists and some

extreme Islamic mullahs, for example--declare the theological impossibility of

human trips to other worlds in space.

 

Resentment of American cultural and political dominance clearly fuels other

"disbelievers," including those political groups who had been hoping for a

different outcome to the Space Race--for example, many Cuban schools, both in

Cuba and where Cuban schoolteachers were loaned, such as Sandinista Nicaragua,

taught their students that Apollo was a fraud.

 

Like a counter-culture heresy, the "moon hoax" theme had been lingering beyond

the fringes of mainstream society for decades. A self-published pamphlet here,

or a "B-grade" science fiction movie there, or a radio talk show guest over

there--for many years it all looked like a shriveling leftover of the original

human inability to accept the reality of revolutionary changes.

 

But in the last ten years, an entirely new wave of hoax theories have

appeared--on cable TV, on the Internet, via self-publishing, and through other

"alternative" publication methods. These methods are the result of technological

progress that Apollo symbolized, now ironically fueling the arguments against

one of the greatest technological achievements in human history.

 

NASA's official reaction to these and other questions was both clumsy and often

counter-productive. On the infamous Fox Television moon hoax program, which was

broadcast several times in the first half of 2001, a NASA spokesman named Brian

Welch appeared several times to counter the hoaxist arguments (Welch was a

top-level official at the Public Affairs Office at NASA Headquarters, who died a

few months later). The poor TV impression he gave (a know-it-all "rocket

scientist" denouncing each argument as false but usually without providing

supporting evidence) may have been due to deliberate editing by the producers to

make the "NASA guy" look arrogant and contemptuous. But to a large degree it

accurately reflected NASA's institutional attitude to the entire controversy.

The disappointing results of participating seemed to strengthen the view within

NASA that the best response was no response--to avoid anything that might

dignify the charges.

 

Roger Launius, then the chief of the history office at headquarters, was an

exception to NASA's overall unwillingness to engage the issue. As an amateur

space historian and folklorist, I had been discussing with him for years the

need for NASA to fulfill its educational outreach charter and to issue a series

of modest monographs (a historian's term for a single-theme pamphlet-length

publication) on many different widespread cultural myths about space activities.

These ranged from allegations of UFO sightings (and videotapings) by astronauts,

to the discovery of alien artifacts on the Moon and Mars and elsewhere, to

miraculous and paranormal folklore associated with space activities, to the hoax

accusations. Launius, nearing retirement in early 2002, decided it was time for

a detailed response to the Apollo hoax accusations, and offered me a sole-source

contract to write a monograph that analyzed why such stories seemed so

attractive to so many people. Launius departed NASA soon

thereafter, leaving the project in the care of a junior historian, Stephen

Garber.

 

My requests for inputs from various NASA offices and public educational

organizations soon reached the ears of news reporters, and some print stories

appeared in late October. Although NASA officials were somewhat taken aback by

the publicity, they were at first inclined to defend the project on educational

grounds.

 

Then, on Monday, November 4, 2002, the eve of the national elections, ABC's

World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings chose the subject for his closing

story: "Finally this evening, we're not quite sure what we think about this," he

intoned. "But the space agency is going to spend a few thousand dollars trying

to prove to some people that the United States did indeed land men on the moon."

 

Jennings described how "NASA had been so rattled" it "hired" somebody "to write

a book refuting the conspiracy theorists." He closed with a misquotation: "A

professor of astronomy in California said he thought it was beneath NASA's

dignity to give these Twinkies the time of day. Now, that was his phrase, by the

way. We simply wonder about NASA."

 

Jennings was referring to Philip Plait, an educator (not a professor) in

California who runs the Bad Astronomy Web site that discusses many mythical

aspects of outer space. What Plait actually had said was that he felt it was

proper for NASA to respond, but that it did seem "beneath their dignity" to be

forced to do it. Contrary to Jennings's account, Plait fully supported the

monograph contract.

 

But that TV insult did it as far as NASA management was concerned. Their dignity

called into question, and fearing angry telephone calls from congressmen

returning to Washington after the election, they decided to revoke the contract.

They paid for work done to date and washed their hands of the project.

 

Many educators contacted me in dismay. Like them, and unlike the NASA spokesmen,

I had always felt that "there is no such thing as a stupid question." And to me

the moon hoax controversy was not a bothersome distraction, but a unique

opportunity.

 

This is the way I see it: If many people who are exposed to the hoaxist

arguments find them credible, it is neither the fault of the hoaxists or of

their believers--it's the fault of the educators and explainers (NASA among

them) who were responsible for providing adequate knowledge and workable

reasoning skills. And the localized success of the hoaxist arguments thus

provides us with a detection system to identify just where these resources are

inadequate.

 

I intend to complete the project, depending on successfully arranging new

funding sources. The popularity of this particular myth is a heaven-sent (or

actually, an "outer-space-sent") opportunity to address fundamental issues of

public understanding of technological controversies.

 

Source: http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-03/commentary.html

 

 

 

 

 

Aravind Mohanram

Ph.D. Candidate

Dept. of Mat Sci and Engg.,

Penn State University,

University Park, PA 16801

www.personal.psu.edu/aum105